BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS – They walked single file into the Brownsville Greyhound station before the sun had risen in the sky, dropped off by immigration authorities from the Port Isabel Detention Center. A Somalian was on his way to meet a cousin in Everett, Washington – although it took volunteer Andrea Rudnik close to two hours and phone call after phone call to sort out his bus ticket. A man from Eretria, who’d been held in detention for three months, was now heading to Oakland, California, to meet his brother. He would be riding buses for dozens of hours, with stops in San Antonio, El Paso, Los Angeles and finally Oakland. All are in the United States legally, having initiated the process of applying for asylum, and most are on their way to stay temporarily with friends or family. Down the road, some may be given permission to stay permanently, and others refused that and deported. For the time being, they had just been released from detention, had no money or food, and … [Read more...]

BROWNSVILLE, TEXAS – These are the hands and feet of mercy. Nearly every morning at 6 a.m., a cluster of volunteers gathers at the Greyhound bus station in Brownsville, Texas, clipboards in hand, ready to help asylum-seekers who immigration authorities have just released from detention get their bus tickets and find their way to the next stop. Most of the immigrants don’t speak English. They are exhausted and apprehensive about what will come next, grateful for a friendly face and a Spanish speaker who can help guide them. As the light rises in the sky, two of the volunteers, Sergio Cordova and Michael Benavides, dash off to their jobs as special education administrators for the local school district. These partners work all day and, as dusk falls, return again to the bus station night after night – driven by the knowledge that at the city’s two border bridges just blocks away, asylum seekers have lined up on the Mexican side, waiting for entry, exposed to the elements, … [Read more...]

SAN BENITO, TEXAS – She’s a native of Zimbabwe, and she arrived in the United States last February on a flight from Dublin. She’d flown from Africa to Ireland – fleeing violence after an attack, trying to reach some contacts there, but was but back on the plane when the authorities found she didn’t have a passport. The flight’s next stop: Los Angeles. She’s 34 years old, with a month-old baby, both of them now living at the La Posada Providencia shelter in San Benito, Texas.  When she fled, she left behind two other children: a 14-year-old son and a 4-year-old daughter, who are now with her mother.  She left suddenly, because “it was not safe to stay.” When she landed in California, she was put in a detention center for two months. “Being in a new country, it’s like prison,” said the woman, who could not give her name out of concern for her safety, but was using the name Shalom.  “It was not easy. Cold. Eating the same food every day, and discovering I was pregnant” – the … [Read more...]

SAN BENITO, TEXAS – The caravan is coming: as many as 7,000 Central American migrants, fleeing violence and corruption in their homelands, bearing down on the U.S.-Mexico border. Remember: these aren’t just numbers; these are people – mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, each one someone’s beloved child. This is, at heart, an achingly human story.   And those who’ve already arrived – the wave of asylum-seekers who crossed the border just ahead of the caravan – give glimpses into the humanitarian and policy challenges ahead. The immigrants’ stories reveal the pain, the hope, and the political reality that after all the relentless miles, after the exhaustion and fear and degradation they have endured, their petitions for asylum may well be denied and they will be deported. These are men, women and children who have turned themselves in to the Border Patrol or immigration authorities – some on the border bridges, some after swimming across the Rio Grande, … [Read more...]

MISSION, TEXAS – Look at a list of the poorest counties in Texas, and the pattern is clear: they’re clustered at the southern tip of the state, in the Rio Grande Valley along the border with Mexico. Geographically, Mission Presbytery covers a big swath of land, encompassing the bottom fifth of the state. And the Presbyterians in the Valley – some five hours from Austin – sometimes feel “kind of cut off and left out,” said general presbyter Sallie Watson. Watson said in July 2017, she read an article in the New York Times about conditions in the Rio Grande Valley, and thought to herself: “Why am I reading about my presbytery in the New York Times? I need to know what’s going on.” She’d been leading the presbytery for about a year then, and wanted to know more. So she called a group of pastors in the Valley and told them “I will drive down, and I will buy lunch. You need to take me where I need to go and show me what I need to see.” On that trip Watson dreamed up this idea: … [Read more...]